Almohad's Fall

So much for Secular Magic.

Dammit. OP will only let me upload one map, ever, under the Free rules, and I made the mistake of deleting my initial upload before discovering this. Ah well, I’ll add the maps once we get properly under way and see if this wiki turns out to be useful or not.

Almohad’s Fall : Turning Point in the Iberian Penninsula

In Real Life:

Almohad Empire, 1214 AD. Muhammad III, “al-Nasir” (1199–1214) was defeated by an alliance of the four Christian princes of Castile, Aragón, Navarre and Portugal, at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in the Sierra Morena. The battle destroyed Almohad dominance. Nearly all of the Moorish dominions in Iberia were lost soon after, with the great Moorish cities of Córdoba and Seville falling to the Christians in 1236 and 1248 respectively.

In Our World

Iberian Tribunal, 1214 AD. The conflict between pro-Christian and pro-Islamic factions within the Covenants of Iberia escalated into unquestionable breaches of the Code by an unknown number of Magi. Rumors of Diabolic dabbling, long ignored as the rantings of pro-Islamic Magi, were proven true at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, where Demonic forces ripped through the armies of both political entities. Over a dozen Magi are believed dead at the site of the battle, though their presence at a mundane conflict is another breach of the code which must be investigated further.

Most of the covenants of the Iberian Penninsula are deeply entrenched in the Christian/Islamic conflict, for it has been a force on the pennisula nearly as long as the Hermetic Order itself has been. Some covenants were founded specifically to push for a particular political agenda, while others were created as a result of schismatic disagreement over how to achieve such goals. Now, after hundreds of years, a vast power imbalance has been created along with the death toll of Magi. One covenant has been destroyed, another decimated, and a third revealed as devil worshippers.

MetaGame Notes

This is an Ars Magica 5th Edition game, with a campaign setting blatantly stolen from the Prospectus Locus campaign of 1999. Back history, and initial political layout is modeled strongly after that setting because I like the idea and don’t have the time to research something equally well balanced on my own. Most changes to that initial setting come from the influence of Jim Butcher, whose Dresden Files books have heavily shaped my attitudes towards handling Faerie. Also, Dominion powers will not be solely controlled by the Christian church, but will be available to any faith-based organizations/structures, including the Almohad Empire.

5th Ed ArM has not yet released an Iberia Tribunal sourcebook, but there are a few 4th Ed and earlier texts which can provide additional campaign notes. At this time, I have no idea how many of those were used to craft the Prospectus Locus campaign, and I haven’t had time to read them myself. Basically, I’m winging it with most of the setting.

I’m trying to run this game via webcam conferencing with several friends that I don’t get to see nearly as often as I’d like to. As such, it is a number of different experiments wrapped into one big one, and is likely to be constantly plagued by technical issues.